As the taste for Rococo exuberance in France waned in the 1760s, the more austere, architectural style of the first wave of Neoclassicism known as the goût grec was embraced by the elite tastemakers of the time. The fashionable new forms and styles of the goût grec were largely disseminated by influential designers and ornemanistes such as Jean-Charles Delafosse and Jean-Louis Prieur, alongside architects including Jean-François de Neufforge and Victor Louis. The first experimental items of furniture in the goût grec were conceived and produced as early as around 1754-1756 with the celebrated bureau plat executed for the amateur connoisseur Ange-Laurent Lalive de Jully, probably by Joseph Baumhauer and Philippe Caffiéri to the designs of Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain, now in the Musée Condé at Chantilly. The brother of Madame de Pompadour, the Marquis de Marigny was probably the most high-ranking and fervent advocate of the new style. As head of the Royal Garde-Meuble, he played an enormously influential role in making the goût grec the peak of Parisian fashion.

The visual vocabulary of the goût grec was heavily influenced by ancient Greek and Roman art, with bucrania and animal masks and heads among some of its most popular and effective decorative devices. These powerful design elements were used in the most varied ways and in every medium; they appear cast in ormolu, molded in porcelain, as well as carved from wood. Console tables employing rams' heads similarly to this lot include Ennemond Alexandre Petitot’s tables for the ducal court in Parma, now preserved at the Palazzo ducale di Colorno, and Prieur’s designs for the Royal Palace in Warsaw (illustrated here). Both Prieur and Petitot incorporated the rams' heads as a principal motif, giving signature character to their furniture. Another common design feature between these consoles and the examples by Petitot and Prieur is the contrasting straight and curved lines of the legs, infusing these tables with a particularly architectural spirit. It is possible that this combination of intricate legs and pronounced ram’s heads in the same table was influenced by the works of André-Charles Boulle, whose oeuvre was rediscovered in France around the time the goût grec came into vogue. Indeed, a console with elaborate legs and rams' heads is illustrated in his Nouveaux Deisseins de Meubles et Ouvrages de Bronze et de Marqueterie Inventés et gravés par André Charles Boulle. A pair of ormolu-mounted ebony corner consoles made in the goût grec style (illustrated here), originally in the collection of the Comte d’Orsay, sold Christie’s, New York, 21 May 1996, lot 333 and subsequently from the collection of Lily and Edmond J. Safra, Sotheby’s, New York, 3 November 2005, lot 168, were executed in a manner similar to Boulle’s designs from about 60 years earlier—inviting the possibility that in addition to ancient Greek and Roman art, the master of French Baroque furniture-making may have also influenced the maker of these consoles.

This lot once comprised a piece of the legendary collection assembled by Mrs. Anna Thomson Dodge (1871-1970) for Rose Terrace, her Grosse Pointe residence modelled on the Petit Trianon at Versailles. A leading philanthropic benefactor and patron of the arts in Detroit with a passionate interest in French eighteenth-century art, Mrs. Dodge enlisted help in forming her collection from the celebrated art dealer, Joseph Duveen. His unrivaled access to the finest examples available on the market led to the acquisition of a series of masterpieces, many with royal provenance, including the celebrated porcelain-mounted bureau by Carlin, originally supplied to Empress Maria Feodorovna, which was for long the most expensive piece of French furniture sold at auction.